


Silver Lining

by ink2819



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, optimistic attitude (generally), sloppy political discussion, throwing shade on the state of the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 12:43:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19296004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ink2819/pseuds/ink2819
Summary: Scrolling through world events the other day and I just thought... with Brexit, elections, G20, Drumpf vist and everything....This is going to be a hell of a month for Mycroft and Greg.





	Silver Lining

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story just before May resigned but never really finished it. Had to go back and change a few things. Also, I’m not an expert on this wretched business, I really don’t know a whole lot about this subject in general. Hope I don’t get anything terribly off QAQ.

 

 

When Mycroft stepped into the apartment, Greg was by the kitchen counter, meddling with a tray of uncooked lasagna, the telly casually left on behind him. A wave of loud ranting flooded out from the machine, and he barely paid any attention at all.

The raging mess around brexit had been going on for years. Now that the final deadline of negotiation pressed near, politicians behaved like a group of school boys on the due night of their collaborative project. Anxious and irritated, ministers scrambled for materials and placed blames on each other. Hardly any British citizen who paid a shred of attention to politics would at this point be no way near surprised by the apocalyptic prophecies voiced by their MPs or the grave analysis of the BBC.

Mycroft was involved in the whole wretched business much deeply than he would have liked. Sometimes he felt like he might be buried in it and would never again see the light of day.

As Mycroft set the keys and his jacket down on the table with a cling, Greg startled to turn around, his brightest smile making everything suddenly bearable.

“Hey, didn’t hear you come in.” Greg greeted him as he laid the tray in the oven, “The telly was too…”

They both turned to look at the screen. Rows of MPs were attempting to shout the Prime Minister down, as the poor woman struggled to finish her sentence. Mycroft saw the evil gleam of the green benches behind them, and thought it must be what hell really looked like.

“Huh, I don’t know when the news stopped being about sports, honestly.” Greg laughed, “Do you want me to turn that off?”

“Yes please. Not a single word more from these imbeciles.”

“I’m so sorry.” Greg said softly, shuffling closer, taking Mycroft’s cheeks in both hands. “But I have mixed feelings about this happening, you know.”

“So does the whole of Britain.”

“Right, right, but I’m thinking about...You remember that afternoon outside Baker Street?”

 

A warm smile crept up Mycroft’s face. Of course. It was the day before the referendum. Mycroft was waiting next to the steps of 221B to give his brother a yet another straight talk about personal safety, and Greg arrived for a rendezvous with Sherlock after he refused to take his car ride home, as usual.

“Good afternoon, Detective Inspector.” Mycroft had greeted him first before Greg stepped fully out of his car. The man was stunning, and he looked genuinely happy to see him, for reasons Mycroft could not fathom to understand.

“Hey, afternoon. Surprised to see you here with the whole country going up in flames.” Greg walked towards him. “I’m for stay, so you know.”

“So am I.” Mycroft offered a polite smile.

“It’ll be okay then, right? Since you’re rooting for it.”

“I alone cannot change the will of the nation. I am ‘rooting’ for whatever the British people want.” Mycroft paused for a moment, becoming aware that he was letting it all show through---the weariness he had been holding for weeks. “I too, am uncertain and concerned about the coming result, the campaign is doing remarkably well, for a start.”

“You must think we’re so stupid.”

“I’m not implying--”

“God, sorry, been spending too much time with Sherlock.” Greg winced, “You must be really busy, because of… this.”

 _Where is that question suppose to lead us?_ “Then I dread to think what comes next.” Mycroft replied.

“That’s true.” Greg chuckled, taking a deeper breath as he raised another question with great reluctance. “Look, if this all turn out…fine, would you like to come out for a drink with me?”

Mycroft took what felt like a century to process what he had just been asked to do, and then another few decades to come up with a reply, just when Greg was ready to apologize for his crudeness.

“Yes. I’d quite like to...entertain that.”

“Yeah?” Greg couldn’t contain his grin at all.

“Yes.” Mycroft smiled back.

 

“You asked me out that day.” Mycroft said, pulling his partner close, leaving a soft peck on his lips.

“And you said yes.”

“On the condition that everything turn out ‘fine’.”

“Did they?”

“It’s still too early to tell.” Mycroft frowned, lost in his thoughts.

“That got you all tensed up, hey, none of that.” Greg held him, kissing and murmuring beneath his jaw.

“Apologies. I’m not entirely used to…”

Greg’s hands ran down his sides, soothing him further. “It’s fine. Think I told you, It’s such a turn on...that you do what you do.”

Mycroft hummed into Greg’s hair, “Is that so? I never had you down as a person provoked by power.”

“I know you deserve to make those very big decisions that you make, Mycroft, because you’re brilliant.” Greg smiled, stood on tiptoes to place a kiss on Mycroft’s temple, only to be lifted up by the firm hand around his waist, unexpected. Mycroft swung him around, landed him on the cool marble counter, hearts pounding in the rush of adrenaline.

“Jesus, Mycroft.” Greg let out a gasp.

Looming over his body with a sly smile, his lover’s palm soothed down his spine. “How I hope the whole of Britain would be as sensible as you are.”

“Not gonna happen.” Greg’s breaths heavied. They stared into each other’s eyes, bodies inches apart. All it would take was a simple touch to setting it all aflame.

 

But Mycroft’s expression was off. He settled into a soft embrace, burying his face in Greg’s chest and exhaled.

“Missed you all day today.”

He sounded exhausted.

Greg’s heart was going to snap into brittle shards. What were they doing to the man he loved? Greg could hate the world and curse it to hell a million times if he wanted to, but he would not allow his own mind to go there.

Mycroft needed him to be strong.

So was the life with the man who took the world on his shoulders. Every night, they return his lover to him, broken. Greg mended him with patience and care, nursing him through fatigue and anxiety, and then, comes every morning, he saw him off.

There were good days, too. Good days when nations ceased fire and crises were resolved. Nights when Mycroft came home early and Greg happened to be there. They’d take baths together, curl in each other’s arms on the couch and watch random programmes until one of them was too drowsy to walk back to bed.

They watched a documentary about Greece once, and Mycroft filled in more interesting facts in the ten minutes after it ended than the narrator managed in a full hour.

Mycroft told him he traveled to Greece in his early twenties. “I simply needed to see... to be there.” He said. He went there to bid his youth farewell. All his dreams about the philosophers who lived the archaic world, grand ideas about humanity, the arts, and beautiful boys who would love him back.

“To appreciate those subjects with my whole heart, my entire body.” He told Greg, whispering softly. “I decided then, that for the first and last time, I would love for merely the sake of love, think only for the sake of thinking, for the sake of being alive. In Greece.”

Greg swallowed, knowing that the young man in the story left the place behind, eventually. He had things to accomplish, he had duties to fulfill. He left that world, and came back for Britain. He became Mycroft Holmes.

That night, they made love slowly under the covers, in the dark, and Mycroft promised him Greece. Though Greg was really skeptical about the existence of a holiday.

 

There were always escalating conflicts, diplomatic deadlocks, and murders somewhere, like it is always raining somewhere in the world. These things never really end. But they learned to take their eyes off the road and trust the wheel to function on its own for a brief second. They tried to be together, every time the wind stills and the oceans lie tranquil. “Inertia.” Mycroft explained to him once, “The trick is to learn the rhythm.”  

 

“I have you.” Greg promised. He held Mycroft firm, hand pressing on the silk back of his waistcoat, hiding kisses into his hair. “Walk me through what’s next?”

 

Mycroft groaned painfully. “She is at the end of her rope.”

“Who?”

“That miserable woman people saw interrogated on television every day.” Came the muffled reply.

Greg sighed. “Dreadful.”

Mycroft hummed in agreement. “The tournament reopens, for the next scapegoat.”

“I imagine that has nothing to do with you.” Greg said, feeling Mycroft’s breath hot and humid in his chest.

“Right. I’m not a party member.” Mycroft lifted up his face, he was blushing slightly because of the muffling. “But someone still have to prepare for the G20. The rest of the world is not coming to an end.” He paused. “As of yet.”

“That’s in Japan.”

“Osaka.” Mycroft replied, as Greg dotted a kiss between his eyes.

Mycroft’s pale lashes fluttered, shyly, and Greg believed that his love had not withered a single bit through time. It grew deeper, if anything.

Greg smiled, if their love was a tree. A hundred feet of soil lay beneath its feet, for it to anchor in.

They have time.

“‘M not gonna see you a whole lot before you leave.” Greg said.

“You are not implying that they need the Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard to police the protest.”[1] Mycroft looked mortified.

“I’m not drafted for this, no. But some others are, it’s a bigger workload is what it is.” Greg ran his hands down his lover’s sides. “Use my title again.” He murmured.

“Take me to bed, Inspector.” Mycroft ordered, his eyes eager.

 

 

Greg sat Mycroft by the bed, and lowered himself to kneel at his feet.

He unlaced both the brogues and held one by the heel, wiggling it off as he looked up into Mycroft’s eyes. He sat, palms flat pressing down on the mattress, and smiled back lazily at Greg.

“I love you.” He said quietly, heads lolling to onside.

“I love you.” Greg grinned, something expanding rapidly in his chest. “But I feel like you’re gonna fall asleep on me.”

“I’m not.” Mycroft denied as a yawned escaped from his mouth. Greg giggled as he took off the other shoe, then the socks. He leaned down and placed a kiss on each of Mycroft’s bare ankles. The weight of his lover’s legs resting in his hand, light.

“Oh.” He heard the soft sigh above him and felt his blood warm.

“Hands.” He said, and Mycroft held out his wrists, one at a time, for Greg to take off his cufflinks.

He collected the pieces of metal and dropped them into Mycroft’s palm, before lunging in and kissing Mycroft with force. Mycroft made a startled noise against his lips and he was knocked off balance, clenching his hand into a fist and threw his arm back to brace himself on the mattress.

Greg started slipping his waistcoat buttons open. “Mmmphf, Greg, there’s the...” Mycroft said between kisses, hand gesturing to his chest.

 _The bloody tie pin._ Greg huffed a laugh in disbelief. “You and your trinkets, love.” He looked down, concentrating on freeing the piece of ridiculous man-jewelry from his lover’s clothes. He could feel Mycroft’s nose touching his forehead, his breath on his skin.

There were quite a number of things Greg enjoyed doing to Mycroft. Overtime, he managed to compile a mental list. Undressing Mycroft like this was one of the top ranking items. It was never just a task. Greg made a show out of it, treated it like an art. He loved how the frustration, and absurdity of it often made him laugh. Depending on the day and the occasion, Mycroft had his handkerchiefs, his neck ties, his pocket watch, his tie pins and collar bars, his cufflinks, braces and sleeve garters. And Mycroft did not just wear any mediocre accessories, no. Greg was convinced he must have collected the most delicate, sophisticated accessories on the planet, the ornaments were as puzzling as the man himself.

In the beginning, Mycroft used to try and shed off all the nuisances discreetly by himself when Greg was not watching. Whenever Greg got his hands on them, Mycroft would apologize in embarrassment, ignoring Greg’s desperate effort to explain.

His shirt stays, absolutely depraved as they were, helped Mycroft realize that Greg wasn’t just being polite on this particular issue. When Greg started out with an ambitious blowjob in the living room and ended up taking him over the dinner table, as soon as he saw the tight bands around his thighs and realized what they were, that was when Greg finally managed to communicate something he had failed to make Mycroft understand with words for months.

Nevertheless, after all this time, Mycroft was still shy about it.

“Leave the shirt.” Greg said, as he finished undressing his lover and stripped out of his own clothes.

Mycroft lay down on his back, the crisp white fabric folding around his bare skin, the collar wide open, cradling his face.

Blue eyes droopy and full of fondness. Mycroft looked almost frail under the warm lamp shade. “If you are to ruin another set of my best dress shirt, I suggest you to be very careful around my assistant. She handles the procurement.” He mumbled, lifting up the covers and sliding in with his shirt on nonetheless.

The shirt was doomed.

“She loves me.” Greg said.

“Fair.” Mycroft smiled. “Join me?” He asked, voice so soft, pleading.

Greg slid in beside him without a word. They turned to lie on their sides, Mycroft’s back against Greg’s chest.

The lights were turned off. Greg fucked him hard and slow from behind as he reached around for his cock. Their breathy moans filled the dark space, and it only took a while before Greg filled his lover, murmuring his name, burying his nose in the stiff collar behind Mycroft’s neck, it carried his bodily scent and his cologne, and all the warmth and love he had sweat in the entire day, for being the man that he was.

Mycroft arched and released in his hand just a few moments later. “Gregory...” Mycroft called as he recovered. Greg tightened his arm around him immediately. “Greg...I wish...I wish to give you all the comfort...and security...” He whispered, so quiet it was barely comprehensible.

“But those things...I do not have.”

“I wish to love you with full confidence and resolution... ”

“But love，I had foresaken for many years, u-util I met you.”

“Mycroft.” Greg held him firmly from behind, kissing the back of his neck over and over again. He just wanted him to stop talking. He felt as if they were falling in an endless abyss. It was the gap of space beneath them, inside there was nothing, nothing except the infinite empty echoing of melancholy.

“Greg?” Mycroft’s hand searched for his, and their fingers intertwined in an instance. “Yeah?” Greg replied.

“If the world is going to end at the end of this month, I wish to take you to Greece.” Mycroft said. “It’s not nearly as charming as it was romanticized, especially with…” He shook his head. “Nevertheless.”

“Okay.” Greg’s fingers flexed, and Mycroft tightened his grasp. “The world is not ending in a month, is it?” Greg asked again.

“No.” Mycroft chuckled softly, Greg could feel it against his chest. “No, Greg. Worse things have happened before. Far worse.”

“How did they cope?” Greg’s eyebrows furrowed. “When it was truly, just, unbearable.”

“However they could, I imagine.” Mycroft said, drifting off. “Thinking about the people they love.”

And with that, Mycroft fell sound asleep beside Greg, his breaths heavier, extending, and relaxed.

Greg lay in the dark, just listening to Mycroft’s breathing. About half an hour later, he got up as quietly as he could, and walked into the kitchen. He unraveled the plastic film on top of the food he left behind when Mycroft returned home, and carried on making his own dinner.

There was all the comfort and security he was ever going to need, just by knowing that Mycroft was sleeping undisturbed in the other room. Greg would guard him, he thought, every night, until the day that the Pacific turn into vapor and their homeland grounded into dust, he will guard his love no matter the cost.

**Author's Note:**

> [1] Here referring to the Trump visit in June, 2019. Thousands of police officers were drafted from different departments to deal with the protests.


End file.
